Argument and Sleep Summary

The Age of Wire and String, by Ben Marcus, is a work of experimental fiction that abandons many familiar conventions of the novel, such as plot, characterization, and dialogue, in favor of creating new definitions and explanations of the world. These descriptions, utterly nonsensical in our everyday world, create a weird, funny, and sad alternate reality that seems touched by both genius and madness. When the book appeared in 1995, it was widely hailed as an important new direction in experimental fiction.

The book begins with two quotes. The first is attributed to the nineteenth century American writer, Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Every word was once an animal." The second is from Michael Marcus, who the reader later discovers is the author's father: "Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time." In a preface titled, Argument, the author explains that the book is a catalog...